Florida Congressman Bill Posey has only two claims to fame, but both have led to his public humiliation, because both are due to his incomparable stupidity.

See, Bill Posey is the freshman Congressman representing the 15th District of Florida, and his primary accomplishment since assuming office has been to introduce H.R. 1503, which "would require future presidential candidates to provide a copy of their original birth certificate." This all made Posey the darling of the "Birther" movement, those lovable loons who insist that President Barack Obama was not born in America. The "Birthers" have been making loud demands to see Obama's birth certificate, by which they mean an even better and more convincing birth certificate than the official one available all over the internet, and they absolutely will not be satisfied until Robert Gates and the Defense Department are given ALL THE MONEY to build a laser-powered F-22 time machine so that they can all be present at the Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women & Children in Honolulu at the precise moment on August 4, 1961 when Stanley Ann Dunham crowned, so that they can watch.

Posey introduced that bill, and the world pointed at him and laughed and laughed, none harder than teevee comedian Stephen Colbert, who lampooned him thusly on his eponymous Report on March 19th.

COLBERT: I am demanding a DNA test to determine whether Florida Congressmen are part alligator. I have had enough of the reckless whispering. But the rumor is, that the morning after the great Okeechobee Hurricane in 1928, Posey's grandmother got stranded with a gator, and fell in love. Now, obviously I don't want to go into any details, but they say the swamp rang with her screams of ecstacy, mingled with the insistent but gentle hissing of her reptilian Romeo.

Instead, the bill fell flat -- it has yet to attract a co-sponsor -- and Posey took a beating from late-night comedy-show hosts and liberal media, who accused him of kowtowing to extremists in his party.

"I expected there would be some civil debate about it, but it wasn't civil," Posey said. "Just a bunch of name-calling and personal denigration. ... There is no reason to say that I'm the illegitimate grandson of an alligator."

Oh, sure! It's getting so that a guy can't abuse his role as a lawmaker by using his office as a platform for lunacy without people getting incivil about it!

Nevertheless, the question still remains, and Posey continues to stonewall. Why won't Posey come clean about whether he is a human-animal hybrid? Why won't he just quash all the rumors by submitting to a simple DNA test?

And I'll point out that Posey's own statement only raises further questions: "There is no reason to say that I'm the illegitimate grandson of an alligator."

Hmmm. I don't recall Mr. Colbert saying anything about Posey being the illegitimate grandson of an alligator! Doth the Congressman perchance protest too much? And is this why Posey refuses to enact legislation that would head off the GATHERING STORM of human-alligator marriages?